Neutral – no changes are made, or the button takes the user back to a screen (e.g. cancel);

Negative – deletes or resets information.

Consider Color and Contrast

UX Movement points out that you want to have clear color contrast because it helps users figure out what action to take. If your main CTA button blends in too much with the background or looks like any other button, then users will feel uncertain. At best, this will slow them down. At worse, they won’t click.

This is especially important for your users who may suffer from colorblindness. Colors can appear very similar to the colorblind user even when they appear completely contrasting to sighted users.

Let’s review the red/green debate briefly. Red typically implies “stop” or “delete” in most people’s minds. But there are those that hold fast that users are more inclined to click a red button over a green one. So the question becomes — which one to choose?

Take a look at the image above. On the left is how someone who can see colors would see the difference between red and green. On the right, look at how a colorblind user views the two colors — both of which appear as very similar shades.

As we described in Web UI Design for the Human Eye, the discrepancy is because red and green appear opposite each other on the color wheel (they complement rather than contrast each other). Faced with this, a colorblind user processing and interpreting the colors probably won’t take the action.

Red and green appear opposite each other on the subtractive color wheel

Using red and green next to each other would certainly be a mistake. You’ll also want to consider the background color behind the button. For example, a green button on a blue background will just disappear because the colors are too similar. This effectively cancels out any action the user might take and causes analysis paralysis.

See the image below for a quick color psychology guide to inform your choices. It will depend on the type of site you’re designing and its brand personality. You should also think about the user and who is likely to be using the site and clicking on the buttons to inform your choices.

So it’s not only necessary to be careful about what colors you choose for your buttons, but it’s important to also ensure that you choose contrasting colors to the rest of the page and for accompanying buttons.

Place Your Button in a User’s Path

Where on the page you place the button is just as important as its color and the text on it or accompanying it.

However, consider the user’s path through the page. As Jeremy Smith points out in this excellent Crazy Egg blog post, buttons need logical placement as to where the user is going to next. You’ll want to consider how people actually read the page.

Let’s take a look briefly at F-patterns and Z-patterns.

The F-Pattern

The F-pattern is the standard for sites with a lot of text, such as news site or blogs. The user’s eyes will scan across the page, left to right, then go left before dropping down and scanning across the page again. In the example below, you’ll want to have your call to action where the eye ends as it scans left to right.

The Z-Pattern

You’ll find this pattern when content is more spacious and the user’s eye will scan the page like Zorro carving a Z. In the example below, you’ll want to place your call to action along the Z line, preferably near the end of it.

These patterns allow you to put the button within the user’s path. After all, you wouldn’t want to bury the button in the footer where no one will ever see or click it. Finally, don’t be afraid to use web conventions — there’s good reason why things are commonly placed where they are, because they work.

Make Buttons Appear Clickable

As we said above, color is an important part of making a button stand out. It’s also useful in making a button clickable. If the button blends too much into the background, a user won’t realize that it’s something you can press.

Buttons should also contain text that provide the user with further visual clues to direct action. Text can be used to clearly direct the user, such as “sign up”, “join now”, or “get started.”

Give the button some room to breathe. When placing a button below a chunk of text, we’d recommend adding a margin that’s roughly ⅔ the height of the button.

Sorry, Yoda, but size matters when it comes to buttons. You want to consider how big the button is in relation to the other elements on the page. Too small and it’ll go unnoticed. Too big and it may overwhelm users. And there’s mobile to consider.

As you can see in the above illustration, three different calls to action have different impacts. The left CTA is small yet hard to miss; the center is unobtrusive; the right is so large that it distracts from the content above it. Color and size make all the difference.

Avoid getting too artistic when it comes to creating buttons and keep them simple and rectangular in shape. Replacing a perfectly crafted button with clever text or a GIF rarely results in a good experience for the user – it just confuses them as they are faced with something that’s unfamiliar.

As Kamil Zieba stated in Web Design for the Human Eye: “Clarity comes before cleverness.” Don’t use a button label like “Cool, let’s rock it!” if “Submit” communicates the action better.

Make Buttons Rounded Rectangles

Buttons should be rectangular because again, that’s what we’re used to. We understand how such buttons function.

According to Paul Olyslager, these rectangular buttons should also have rounded corners as studies have shown that these perform the best. This is because rounded corners draw attention to the inside of the button as they point inwards. It’s also because we’ve evolved to avoid anything with sharp corners as human beings, as they represent a threat of injury.

Floating Action Buttons (FABs)

Before we move onto button placement, a quick word about floating action buttons (FABs) which have become more popular in recent years.

FABs are generally circular buttons which ‘float’ above the user interface and are “used for a promoted action”. We’re seeing more sites use them “to represent the single action users perform the most on that particular screen,” says graphic designer Teo Yu Siang.

A FAB ‘floats’ on top of the regular content and can encroach on other elements, as well as distract the user from the rest of the content.

Siang goes on to point out that while they seem to be a great idea, and provide good UX in ideal scenarios, in reality, widespread adoption of FABs might actually harm the overall UX.

This is because they reduce the immersive experience as they are overlaid on top of every single UI element on the screen. This distracts the user from the overall experience and as such, you should take care when adding FABs to any page as it could be counterproductive.

Not only this, but as Siang says,

“By taking up real estate on the screen, the FAB effectively blocks content.”

This isn’t to suggest that you shouldn’t use FABs at all, but you should certainly take care with their use and placement as they can reduce the number of users taking the desired action.

Button tutorial

Creating an effective call to action depends on several factors, including relative size, color, and text. We’ll create a quick example with UXPin to illustrate some best practices we just described.

1. People see the hero first

The largest, topmost elements get the most attention.

2. Their eyes wander downward

Subtitles come next: bits of text that, being less prominent, create a hierarchy of attention.

3. Content moves them along

There’s a chance that people will skip from the subheads straight to the buttons, but often they need to know where each button will take them. The “sales pitch” text explains in detail why users should click each call to action. This content is a promise: What will tapping a button get you?

4. Calls to action

The calls to action themselves occupy the third tier. Why?

Contrast: Button backgrounds that stand out against the body’s background.

Text: Clean and legible, usually in a sans-serif typeface.

Placement: In a nice, even row.

How it works

This pattern takes advantage of Western languages’ left-to-right flow: Because people are already accustomed to reading from the top left to the bottom right, arranging elements that follows conventional thinking feels natural — even if readers aren’t aware of it.

Further Resources

So that wraps up our discussion and tutorial. If you’d like to learn more about creating effective CTAs for good UX design, check out some of our favorite resources below.

UXPin– Web Design for the Human Eye (free e-book explaining how to keep users on a site longer with smart visual design. 30+ deconstructed examples from top companies included.)

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In your example, the Mission Statement background is the same color as your CTA buttons, implying that BOTH are clickable. It’s good practice to make all CTA and links the same color and differentiate other page elements with a different color.